Franz Ferdinand assassinated in Sarajevo
Heir to crowns of Austria-Hungary and his wife shot by Serbian nationalists
Sarajevo, 28 June 1914 - Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir-presumptive to the crowns of Austria-Hungary, and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, have been shot dead in the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia today.
The Archduke had been attending army manoeuvres in the region and was joined in the city by his wife yesterday.
Passing through the streets in a motorcade, the Archduke was shot when the car in which he was travelling slowed at one point.
The successful assassin, Gavrilo Prinzip, being led away by police after shooting Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg (Images: Illustrated London News [London, England], 11 July 1914)
An assassin forced his way through the crowd and fired two shots into the car. One of the rounds struck the Archduke in the throat, severing a large artery. The second entered the Duchess’s side. Both died within minutes of being wounded.
A Serbian, Gavrilo Princip, a native of Livno who is thought to have been a student in Belgrade, was immediately arrested at the scene and is said to have confessed.
At the time of the shooting, the visiting royals were on their way to a hospital to visit people injured in an earlier assassination attempt.
A letter from Lord Chamberlain's office stating that King George has commanded a week of mourning for the death of the Archduke. (Image: National Archives of Ireland, CSO/RP 1914 10,629)
That morning, another Serbian nationalist threw a bomb at a car that was carrying the Archduke and his wife to a meeting in the Town Hall from the train station.
The bomb exploded under another car in the motorcade, injuring one aide-de-camp and several spectators who had lined the route.
William Mulligan from the UCD Centre for War Studies on the impact of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand
The car carrying the Archduke sped on to the Town Hall meeting where the Archduke condemned the fact that he had been ‘received with bombs'.
The assassination attempt is believed to be related to the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina was declared part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908, a move that has outraged Serbian nationalists.
The heir-presumptive to the empire is now Archduke Karl Franz Joseph, son of the Emperor's nephew Otto.
[Editor's note: This is an article from Century Ireland, a fortnightly online newspaper, written from the perspective of a journalist 100 years ago, based on news reports of the time.]
